Part 7 — How the Universe is Like a Planet

A planet has a top speed for surface traffic — the speed at which you become weightless and enter a surface-skimming orbit — and the universe, in partial analogy, also has a top speed. Space resembles the surface of a planet in the limited sense that the speed of light is the fastest anything can go unless it were somehow able to leave the "surface". Something could not get from one place to another faster than light unless it could somehow leave the space we know and take a "short cut", but the analogy here is very vague indeed. I have never seen a clear explanation of how anything could exceed the speed of light, whereas if you exceed the skimspeed of a planet you just fly off into space.

A planet also defines an idea of main force — the planet's own weight. Clearly nothing on the planet, no part of it, can weigh more than the whole. This maximum force can be calculated by squaring the speed a couple of times and replacing quartic dimes by tons. Surprisingly, the universe also defines an idea of main force and it is calculated exactly the same way! This force is the most any two distinct bodies can attract each other gravitationally — the limit exists because space itself collapses when things that are too massive get too close together. It can be thought of as a "buckling strength" limit of space — when things attract each other very much they simply merge and then are no longer two distinct things. The limit on attraction in our universe is easy to calculate from 10¹⁰ dimes, our figure for the speed of light. You just start with top speed, square a couple of times, replace each quartic dime by a ton, and there's the force. It comes out 10⁴⁰ tons.

How about extending the analogy to include fireworks? The entire world's full power can be calculated the same way as the luminous power of a planet's New Year's display. It's simply main force pushing at top speed. In the planet's case this was the planet's weight multiplied by its surface orbit speed and in the case of the universe it is ten-to-the-forty tons multiplied by ten-to-the-ten dimes, which makes the universe's full power come out to ten-to-the-fifty tondimes.

If the universe's full power were channeled into creating stars out of nothing it would create a hundred thousand suns in a snap of the fingers. Think of snapping your fingers at a moderate tempo like a hundred times a minute and seeing a hundred thousand sun-like stars come into being with each snap.